1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printer buffer unit used in a system having one or a plurality of host computers which share one or a plurality of printers.
2. Related Background Art
Conventionally, in sharing one or a plurality of printers by one or a plurality of host computers, a printer buffer unit operates simply to send data from a host computer to a printer to sequentially print the data.
If a print job of a host computer has been completed and the next print job occurs, documents for the next print jobs are ejected onto the documents for the present print job. Therefore, there arises a problem that it takes time to discriminate between documents of different jobs.
Furthermore, documents for different print jobs outputted from a plurality of host computers are ejected as to be superposed one upon another on the eject tray of the same printer. Therefore, it arises a problem that it takes time to discriminate between documents of different print jobs from different host computers.
Still further, if an error such as no printing sheet, jamming, or the like occurs at a printer under operation and it becomes impossible to continue the print-out operation, there arises a problem that the print job cannot be terminated unless such an error is informed to the host computer and a printer error recovery operation is carried out manually by the operator.
Furthermore, if a plurality of printers are connected to a printer buffer unit and the sizes of printing sheets or the like for the printers are different, a host computer is required to check the printers connected to the printer buffer unit and select a suitable one.